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I have recently resolved to learn how to wink. So, I practise, while trundling up and down the hallways of South Building 5, offering my casual flirtatiousness to posters of “hybrid cable-driven robotic manipulators” and enigmatic signs on toilet doors with pictures of little people bowing.

I have now managed to narrow it down to only a single eye, and transformed it from a nervous twitch to something a little more urbane. All that remains is to deploy it to Denton when he least expects it, without so much as batting an eye, if you know what I mean.

So yes, Tokyo IS an exciting place to be right now.

As my Professor is Japanese, I have always suspected that he is also a Samurai.

Today, I was proven correct.

While sitting with my Professor and tutor working on an experiment, I reached across the table to retrieve a part, and in doing so, touched my palm against a burning-hot soldering ion I had most wisely left switched on.

When I flinched, pulled back my arm, and punched myself in the head, I was at least expecting to identify a parting of lips.

From the government department of smiles, he did not even walk to the ticket machine and take a number. His eyelids did no batting, and his chuck did no chuckling.

Now that’s a real samurai.

We have dived head first into Japanese class for beginners, and Owen’s patience is being sorely tested. Conversation drills tend to go along the lines of:

Owen: “Excuse me, where is the Cafe?”
YT: “The gymnasium is under the elevator.”
Owen: “No, no, I asked you where the Cafe is…”
YT: “Ohhhhh… I get it. Hmmmm…”

Pause.

Stare blankly at the conversation sheet, for a solid minute or so.

Then, a feeble “The cafe is under the elevator.”

Owen never got his coffee. And here ends yet another post where I don’t actually tell you anything about what’s going on in Tokyo.

A quick note to let everyone know that, having made it through a few misadventures, followed by a scandalous lack of internet cafes, or otherwise the presence of astonishingly expensive ones, I’m now in a position to dust the cobwebs off the ol’ blog and publish some longggggg overdue posts. Sorry for absence, and I do hope everyone is well back in Australia.

The dormitory greets the influx of globetrotting students in typical Japanese style: with hordes of unintelligible paperwork, all to be filled out with military precision to withstand the unrelenting scrutiny of the local Ward Office officials. Do I know how to write my name in Katakana? Pretend to think about it a while…. no, I don’t think so, sorry. That’s OK. Can we just see your visa for a moment? Oh, well, about that, ahhh, you see, it goes like this…

You get the drift. Read the rest of this entry »

The rest of our travel adventure in Japan, were, for me, rather un-adventurous. Following our night out in Osaka, Owen and his stomach got into a lovers’ tiff which was referreed by a seemingly smitten nurse at Osaka Hospital, just a Charcoal Tablets’ throw away from Osaka Train Station. I, on the other hand, spent the day alternating between holding my eyes open with fancy mind power tricks, and discovering these didn’t work, falling asleep amid a sprawl of backpacks and chuckling fellow waitee’s.

We made it to Kyoto that night and spent 3 hours in vain trying to locate a cheap room, throwing precious Yen into the hands of taxi drivers shuttling us around and dropping us off everywhere but near a cheap hotel. Subsequently, our accomodation ended up on the pricier end of the scale that night, a lesson learnt, and in future we always booked ahead (a novel idea almost anywhere in SEA, which is not plagued by the exorbitant land prices of Japan). Read the rest of this entry »

So what demon of culture wrapped its’ wiry claws around the neck of our morning adventure, you ask?

 Two words. Curfews and Cleanliness.

Firstly, after finally making it to our hostel, strangely located underneath a sports stadium, we find that cleaning of the rooms takes place during the day, during which absolutely no-one can occupy their room. Period. No fun, seeing as we were both desperate for 40 winks, and heck, we PAID for our room right?

The next bombshell was curfews, which meant gates were locked at 11pm, unlocked at 6am, and you had to tell them if you were planning to stay out all night, otherwise they, and I quote, “got worried”. Heck, we would have appreciated the concern if it didn’t feel like we just joined the army. Read the rest of this entry »

And then, one morning, Lady Shanghai woke, shook the sleep from her eyes, and announced to us through the Ether that our time was up. She landed a ferry at the dock, the rain on our head, and a taxi at our door, and us, being the sensitive young males we are, took the hint and packed our undies for Japan.

Now there was a marked discontinuity between my anticipation of our oceanic “odys-sea” (a-he he he), and Owen’s. I was dressed to meet Jim, to awake in Christmas Island, while Owen was preparing for, in a sense, a laugh track. It was, of course, somewhere in between, no match, of course, for a good dose of turbulence and tiny, tiny dinner trays, but we didn’t need to swim to the submarine-style lifeboats while thumbing through a wet dictionary for the Japanese for “HELP!”. Read the rest of this entry »

Owen and I decided that the Shanghai nightlife is sorely lacking 2 Ockers in $10 jeans, so we mount our trusty… ummm… wallets… and headed for where the wine symbols congregated on our map.

 Our first watering hole turns out, much to our amusement, to be of the aquatic kind, where the tables were fish tanks, all connected to a larger fish pond. Owen and I found it oh-so-awkwardly romantic, as enormous gold fish sipped on chlorine right below where we sipped on beer, and we made sure we completely failed to capture the mood of the scene with some remarkably blurry photos.

Our next port of call began with a lady standing out the front of a bar requesting we call her “Mum”, and concluded with a game of connect-4 that cost me a kahlua. So no, Owen, I really HAVEN’T played connect-4 before…. Read the rest of this entry »

Most countries with a strong cultural presence have a traditional dance, or dance style, usually one the gets rolled out on festival days or at religious events. Thailand has Khon, Malaysia has a number derived from the Indians, Malays, and Chinese, and Australia has, well… probably something with gumboots and beer cans. Read the rest of this entry »